Pandemic Flu Checklist – K.L.E.A.N. Hawaii
☐ Identify essential employees and other critical inputs (e.g. raw materials, suppliers, sub-contractor services/products, and logistics) required to maintain business operations by location and function during a pandemic.
☐ Train and prepare ancillary workforce (e.g. contractors, employees in other job titles/descriptions, retirees).
☐ Develop and plan for scenarios likely to result in an increase or decrease in demand for your products and/or services during a pandemic (e.g. effect of restriction on mass gatherings, need for hygiene supplies).
☐ Determine potential impact of a pandemic on company business financials using multiple possible scenarios that affect different product lines and/or production sites.
☐ Determine potential impact of a pandemic on business-related domestic and International travel (e.g. quarantines, border closures).
☐ Find up-to-date, reliable pandemic information from community public health, emergency management, and other sources and make sustainable links.
☐ Establish an emergency communications plan and revise periodically. This plan includes identification of key contacts (with back-ups), chain of communications (including suppliers and customers), and processes for tracking and communicating business and employee status.
☐ Implement an exercise/drill to test your plan, and revise periodically.
☐ Forecast and allow for employee absences during a pandemic due to factors such as personal illness, family member illness, community containment measures and quarantines, school and/or business closures, and public transportation closures.
☐ Implement guidelines to modify the frequency and type of face-to-face contact (e.g. hand-shaking, seating in meetings, office layout, shared workstations) among employees and between employees and customers (refer to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations).
☐ Encourage and track annual influenza vaccination for employees.
☐ Evaluate employee access to and availability of healthcare services during a pandemic, and improve services as needed.
☐ Establish policies for employee compensation and sick-leave absences unique to a Pandemic (e.g. non-punitive, liberal leave), including policies on when a previously ill person is no longer infectious and can return to work after illness.
☐ Consider policies for flexible worksite (e.g. telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g. staggered shifts).
☐ Establish policies for preventing influenza spread at the worksite (e.g. promoting Respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette, and prompt exclusion of people with influenza symptoms).
☐ Establish policies for employees who have been exposed to pandemic influenza, are suspected to be ill, or become ill at the worksite (e.g. infection control response, immediate mandatory sick leave).
☐ Establish policies for restricting travel to affected geographic areas (consider both domestic and international sites), evacuating employees working in or near an affected area when an outbreak begins, and guidance for employees returning from affected areas (refer to CDC travel recommendations).
☐ Set up authorities, triggers, and procedures for activating and terminating the company’s response plan, altering business operations (e.g. shutting down operations in affected areas), and transferring business knowledge to key employees.